Since Cyan is no more, here's my reel

As some of you might already know, Cyan Worlds, makers of the Myst series of computer games (and long time Mac fans) announced two weeks ago that they would be closing their doors and pulling the plug on future projects. I've been at Cyan since 1999, and for those of us affected by this announcement, it came as a bit of a shock.

Rather than persue another career in the gaming industry, I'm looking for work that is more along the lines of my college education in Broadcast, and am looking for full time or contract work in a motion graphics related position.

But the first step has been to update my demo reel. I'd greatly appreciate any feedback that anyone would care to offer:

Great Job! I looked at it a second time before writing this. The reel is tight and moves along. Even at 2:18 it didn't seem that long. The music kept things moving along. That's probably one thing I wanted to listen to the second time was the music. At first I thought it was mundane at points and repetitive, but the 2nd time around I was OK with it. Your variety is good. 2D, 3D, commercial and a nice mix of elements. Calvin & Hobbes was a bit dark (might be WMV and PC gamma) and it didn't seem to fit in for the length of that particular clip. I couldn't tell what it was. At the end of the reel, which I just watched for the 4th time, there is no contact information or website to refer to. I don't know if this is intentional, but I would add it. This helps if the reel is not accompanied by any other material that has that information. Hope this helps.

Coincidently, I did have contact info posted on the previous rendering, but chopped it off to shave a little bit of time and size for the web download. On the DVD copies I'm sending out, the contact info is clearly listed after the music fades out.

Sorry to hear about your company going belly up man, I've been there myself. Feedback eh? Well to be honest I think your reel could use a bit of trimming. I saw a lot of stronger work near the end of the reel (particularly the compositing work, nice bit of roto on the ball) I think you could probably drop about 20-40 seconds from it and get a stronger presentation. Not necessarily elimintating some clips but definitely shortening the duration of some of them would help. Right now that reel looks like you could probably get a job as a promotions/news graphics designer at a TV station. I think when I worked at one we hired someone at about your skill level.

Of course this reminds me that I haven't updated my reel since 2002 and there's been some tasty stuff done since then. I'd better get cracking :)

Good job. I like your work with 3d stroke. I don't see very many reels with a segment of work before the name slate, but it may be a good way to get attention. Then after they see your nice slate, they will want to stick around. I would recommend speeding up your first clip to get to your name quicker. Hope this helps. I just posted my first reel. Check it out.